Craig Hodges > Recent Status Updates

At the age of twenty, while I was reading one or another of the novels of Thomas Hardy, I was startled to find that I had done quietly and calmly what I had often been warned I was likely to do if I read the works of atheists or agnostics or pantheists or almost any sort of writer of fiction...

The loss of my faith, to call it that, brought about many changes in my way of life, only one of which is relevant here.

At the age of twenty, while I was reading one or another of the novels of Thomas Hardy, I was startled to find that I had done quietly and calmly what I had often been warned I was likely to do if I read the works of atheists or agnostics or pantheists or almost any sort of writer of fiction...

The loss of my faith, to call it that, brought about many changes in my way of life, only one of which is relevant here.

At the age of twenty, while I was reading one or another of the novels of Thomas Hardy, I was startled to find that I had done quietly and calmly what I had often been warned I was likely to do if I read the works of atheists or agnostics or pantheists or almost any sort of writer of fiction...

The loss of my faith, to call it that, brought about many changes in my way of life, only one of which is relevant here.

"The loss of my faith, to call it that, brought about many changes in my way of life, only one of which is relevant here." p. 23

Just delved into Bookmooch today.

Cater deserves a thorough critique.

More critical of the finance sector than I was expecting.

Classic Hughes "Alan Moorehead, the Australian writer who became my mentor, claimed that you (meaning he) could grow up in Australia without ever seeing a first-rate building. I don't thing this was true. It depends what you mean by "first-rate"... p.200

"Thinking about the life of the mind, of its place & value in human life, is in a broad sense an ethical concern... done passionately in response to a sense that it is an obligation intrinsic to an academic vocation, it will be an example of the Socratic claim that to inquire how to live is amongst the most important things a human being can do. Not to do it, he said at his famous trial, was to live a life unworthy..

Re: Murdoch entering new markets & New York in particular, Wolff notes that it
"involves an amount of recklessness and grandiosity... [it's] the hustler's tale: the nobody from somewhere else arriving in a new place and convincing people that he or she is somebody... Murdoch in 1974 is only qualitatively different from the hustler. He's legitimate, but the legitimacy isn't worth all that much." p 20

"[W]hite fellas who devote their lives to Aboriginal people not infrequently become extremely possessive, and are bewildered and disappointed when they realise that they mean less to the Aboriginal people than the Aboriginal people mean to them... The underlying issue in all such cases is on of control, which Aboriginal Australians have subtly but inexorably resisted." p.39

Section on "Australia and friends" Abbott writes, "Although China is likely to become even stronger in the years ahead, this may not mean much change for Australia's international relationships or foreign policy priorities." (p.160)
Abbott also is unusually comfortable using the word "anglosphere".

On page 289 "In modern politics, you have to pretend to be living the life of an ordinary person, when of course, you can't and don't do the shopping in the supermarket, fill up the car, go down to the pub for a few beers, the quiz night and a bit of banter. But everybody nowadays has to go through the elaborate pretense that the PM could and should do all that, otherwise he...is 'out of touch', the worst criticism..

On page 40 authors write of Howard's first overseas travel experience: "travel didn't broaden John's mind. He returned home with a strengthened view of the virtues of his Australia." [ouch]